


Some Mistakes Are Meant to Be

by lotuskasumi



Category: Final Fantasy XIII Series, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: F/M, For Science!, Post-Lightning Returns, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 13:55:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2027550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotuskasumi/pseuds/lotuskasumi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt on Tumblr: "Hope and Lightning end up having to share the same hotel room and there’s only one bed. This is so cliched I know but it was the only thing I could think of atm XD" (Mild swearing. Post-LR, new world!fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Mistakes Are Meant to Be

The first accident was neither Hope nor Lightning’s fault. That much was clear — the blame rested solely on the hotel staff’s blunder in assigning them a single room, despite being asked repeatedly to grant them two.

"They did this on purpose."

"I’m not so sure about that."

"They had to. People can be petty, Hope." Lightning looked at the bed as if it had done her a great, personal wrong. Hope glanced around the room, trying not to sigh. It was suddenly much warmer in here, though outside had been a rather brisk, mid-winter evening.

"There’s a mini-bar," he said, pointing at it. Hope paused to think about the inevitably outrageous price of the drinks inside, and how they’d be tacked onto the bill — and onto Lightning’s already sour mood — and wished he hadn’t mentioned it.

But Lightning didn’t seem to hear him. “There’s two pillows,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and moving her eyes from the bed to Hope in a glance he had recognized from long ago, and hadn’t often seen since. She got that look before she attacked something. “And probably a sheet beneath the blanket.”

"Er, right." Are we just gonna point out things in the room? Because there’s an interesting looking carpet, too. "And that’s important."  
"It is, because we can split it." Lightning tightened her lips into a flat line as she tilted her head in thought. "We’ll have to flip a coin to see who actually gets the bed."

"That’s silly, Light," Hope protested. He offered a reassuring smile to her narrowed eyes and the sudden sharpness of her gaze. "We’ll just call the front desk and see what they can do about it."

Lightning folded her arms and didn’t budge from the spot she’d staked on the opposite side of the bed, and watched Hope do exactly what he’d said.

Hope was grateful that Lightning was too kind — and far too proud besides — to gloat about his obvious failure. She said nothing about his tense expression, his scowl that furrowed his brows over into a disapproving line, or the faint twinge of pink on his cheeks.

"Well? What they’d say?"

"Besides no?"

Lightning nodded.

"The rest of the rooms are being reserved for a convention. There’s nothing they can do — well, they offered to knock off the price of one of the drinks in the mini-bar, but —"

Lightning was already moving to the little case before Hope could finish talking. “You wanna share? It’s probably nothing good.”

"No, you have it." Hope picked up one of the pillows, a limp, weak little white slab, and contemplated the horrors that probably awaited him on the hotel’s bed sheet. They could clean it all they liked, but it wouldn’t do much to purify Hope’s overactive imagination.

Lightning sat down on the edge of the bed, keeping her back to Hope as she took a few sips of the drink. “You can have the bed,” she said, talking so low that her voice was almost lost from the sounds of traffic outside. “I’ll take the floor.”

"The floor’s probably disgusting, Light. You take the bed. I’ll call down and ask for a cot or something."

"Cot’s probably no cleaner than the floor."

"Yeah, but let me imagine it might be. Couldn’t hurt."

That got her to chuckle. She peered over her shoulder at him, and it didn’t take long for her laughter to turn into a smile. “You got a coin?”

Hope fished out a little copper coin from one of his pockets and fiddled with it between his fingers. “Tails,” he said, holding the coin up so she could get a good look at it.

"Heads." Lightning tapped her fingers against the side of the beer and watched as Hope flicked the coin into the air and stepped back, to prevent himself from acting as accidental interference.

When the coin landed, both of them couldn’t help but laugh. It fell into one of the pleats of the blanket and stood up on its ridges.

"Tails from this angle," Lightning said.

"I see heads."

"You don’t have to be so accommodating."

"You don’t always have to turn it down, either."

"Hmm." Lightning tilted her head back and finished what was left of the beer in long, appreciative sips. She tapped her fingers against the can again before reaching out to set it down on the dresser that housed a large television set and a towering mirror that loomed up from behind. "We could sleep head to foot."

Hope smiled politely and was almost overwhelmingly grateful that Snow was not here to point out the imagery of such a position — which, of course, only made him think about the position. He turned his laughter into a little cough and glanced down at the coin on the bed, reaching out to draw it closer. “We could always try again,” he offered.

"It doesn’t matter, really," Lightning said, already sliding her boots of her feet and stretching her ankle out in little circles, making the bones pop. "I’m tired. We’ve been on the road all day, and all I want to do is sleep. And besides, I trust you, Hope."

"Thanks."

"Thank _you_." She gave him a quick, disarming smile as she walked off to the bathroom to finish getting ready for bed. Hope felt the heat in the room rise again as he watched her go.

It was later, during that long stretch of hours in the night where the mind both despaired and marveled at its lack of sleep, that the second accident happened. Lightning shifted from one side to the other, and she drew her legs up with a quick snap, pulling herself into a little knot beneath the blanket and sheets — and cracking Hope in the nose with her kneecap.

"Oh, shit," she hissed, already pushing herself up to tend to the damage. Her hands moved awkwardly in the air around Hope’s face, wanting to tend to the wound but not having any means to do it. "How bad is it?"

"That depends," Hope said, his hands covering his nose to staunch the flow of blood that was already filling up his palms. His voice was thick and muffled, and he watched Lightning’s eyes grow wider as they grew accustomed to the darkness and searched his expression.

"On what?" she asked, reaching across him to turn on the lamp.

"You ever straighten out a nose before?"

"Once," she said. "A very long time ago."

Hope did not ask her to elaborate.

The best they could do was make use of the complementary package of tissues in the bathroom, swapping out the ones that were bloody and useless with fresh sheets. Hope pulled himself into a sitting position with the headboard at his back, holding the next tissue steady against his nose while Light sat hunched and cross-legged next to him, chewing on the inside of her cheek and wondering how to apologize.

"I really didn’t mean to do that."

"I know you didn’t, Light."

"I’m not used to having someone else next to me while I sleep," she continued.

"Me neither," Hope said.

Lightning looked like she wanted to protest that for a second, but she moved her eyes down to the cradle she was making with her hands and seemed more interested in watching that then in answering. “It’s probably not hard to get used to it,” she said.

"Probably not." Hope examined the blood on the tissue, grateful to see there wasn’t as much anymore.

"But ‘til then, I kind of like having my own space."

Hope dabbed at the last bit of blood on his nose and wrapped it in a clean tissue, which he added onto the little pile next to the bed on the nightstand. “You can have it, Light. I’m not gonna take that from you.”

When he turned back, she was already looking at him. In the pale light of moon filtering through the window, along with a pink neon sign advertising some all night fast food joint, Hope could see that she was smiling. It was a shy little sickle grin that made his heart both twist and burn.

It took him a little while to return the gesture, and by then she had returned back to her position, curled up on her side with her head on the furthest part of the bed. If she saw it, Hope had no way of knowing.

He ought to have said something. Ought to have said more, done more, reassured her that there was nothing he would ask of her that wouldn’t already be offered first by her own suggestion. They’d taken this trip to help get used to the world around them, to get used to sharing some part of their lives with each other not as partners in battle, but companions. Friends, or something like it. There was so much time behind them, with so much that had changed without the other noticing — it was about time they faced what time remained to them together, side by side in a sense.

Hope was just happy to have her back. Hope was just happy that she wanted him around at all. That was more than he’d expected, and he couldn’t imagine being brash enough to demand more.

But no matter how many words Hope piled up inside his head, they never seemed to find a way onto his tongue and out of his mouth.

That was the last mistake, and that was all Hope’s.

Hope fell asleep before she did, and woke up hours later with his neck cramped and his head aching, and with a bruise forming beneath both of his eyes.

"We’ll have to get you some sunglasses," Lightning said, frowning regretfully as she looked Hope’s face over again. "Or… I guess I could run out to a drug store and see if they’ve got some concealer light enough to match your tone."

"It’s not a big deal, Light. Really." Hope said. He didn’t talk again until they’d left the hotel and put the little town behind them, glancing back at the exit signs and the cracked pavement in the rearview mirror.

"We should come up with a good story," he said, as if a few minutes of tense silence didn’t separate his first comment from the latest. "You know how everyone is. They’ll wanna know what happened."

"And you don’t feel like telling them the truth."

Somewhere in the back of Hope’s mind, he could hear Snow and Fang laughing raucously. “Not really.”

"You got into a fight and I had to break it up," Lightning suggested.

Hope shook his head. “No, it’d make more sense if you were the one in the fight and I was the one who broke it up. With my face.”

Lightning snorted. “Or you fell on a patch of ice.”

"That’s not impressive."

"The less flashy lies are, the more believable they can be."

Hope considered this. “For science.”

"Excuse me?"

"It was an experiment, for science." He peered at her out of the corner of his eyes before returning his gaze back to the road. "I asked you to punch me in the face and you obliged."

"That’s more than a little ridiculous, Hope."

"Sure it is. But it’s believable."

Lightning rested her elbow against the side of the door and leaned her face against her cupped hand, studying Hope. “It could work,” she said, her voice trailing off as she got lost in thought.

"But?"

"But nothing. I was agreeing with you."

"It sounded like you wanted to say something else."

"Did it?"

Hope nodded.

"Well, no. I didn’t."

It was another hour before she talked again.

"I wouldn’t ever do that to you, y’know. No matter what the reason was."

"… Okay?"

"I meant that I wouldn’t hurt you, Hope. Even if it was for… for science or whatever. I couldn’t do it. I won’t."

"Oh. Right. Thanks." Hope chewed on the inside of his cheek, hating his suddenly inability to speak.

Hope had moved one of his hands to his lap during the long drive, and was surprised beyond words when he felt Lightning’s hand reach over to seize his in sudden, awkward squeeze.

Their fingers locked as all the words they could have said fell into this new, comfortable silence. They drove the rest of the way without saying a word to each other, holding onto each other in some small but utterly crucial way.


End file.
